Posted by anniegirl1138 on September 12, 2008
When Rob and I were first corresponding via email, I didn’t know what he looked like or he me. It wasn’t important. We were friends although looking back we both realize that the intent changed sooner than either of us realized until much later.
Rob had taken a long road trip through the U.S. just before he and I “met” courtesy of my rather flip/flirty reply to a post of his on the widow board. At the time I was just being cute. One of the social aspects of the board allowed for kidding that bordered (or completely crossed the line at times) on that kind of adult banter.
On his journey, he had sent periodic updates of his progress to the board and posted pictures of the places he’d stopped along the way. Many of the pictures featured him and he acquired quite the widda fan club. Women emailed/pm’d him with invitations to lunch or for coffee or dinner if he should happen to be “in their neighborhood”.
I hadn’t been paying attention and didn’t read about his travels or see the photos until after we’d started to write/IM.
He never knew what I looked like until after he told me that he had feelings for me.
Today’s tee is one that Rob was wearing in one of the first photos I saw of him that were not from the widow board collection. It was one that MidKid took of the two of them in the kitchen here in our home. She had it posted on her MySpace and Rob directed me to it.
Yes, I saw both MidKid and ElderD’s MySpace pages. Rob shared them with me because he is proud of them and wanted me to know them.
I still love this particular photo. It is one of my favorites Rob looks good in tight tee’s.
Posted in YWBB, love and relationships, marriage issues, remarriage of widowed people | Tagged: couples who met through the YWBB, long distance relationships, Rob, stories of our early relationship days, T-shirt Friday, YWBB | 7 Comments »
Posted by anniegirl1138 on December 25, 2007
This time last year I had known Rob for about ten days. He introduced himself to me via a PM (private message) on the YWBB (young widows bulletin board) in response to my response to one of his posts. He had posted about his daughter, Jordan, commenting on his teenage like behavior and I had replied, jokingly offering to be his evil twin as we seemed to share many of the same behaviors. His reply message to me was entitled, Hey there Evil Twin. Our hailing each other as twins proved more prescient than either of us could have known at the time. He offered an ear via email despite the fact that he’d recently had a bad experience with another person on the board. Someone who had contacted him, and he misunderstood the true intent behind this woman’s reaching out to him. Despite that he reached out in friendship to me anyway. He had been reading my posts, sensing that we had much in common and also they occasionally made him laugh.
We began writing to each other off the board on December 18th which was just short of a week later. We nearly stopped communicating a few days after that when he told me I reminded him of a character from the Chuck Palahniuk novel, Fight Club, and I googled the character only to discover she was a support group junkie and a nymphomaniac. I was more than taken aback, and he was profusely apologetic, and persistent, and we continued writing. Now Rob tells me that his initial impression of me, based on my posting on the YWBB, was way off, but I have since watched Fight Club and I can see why I reminded him of Marla Singer. He remarked the other day that “last time this year I was on the verge of fucking things up” and I had nearly forgotten all about it. Later that evening I went back and reread the letters from that week and the week of January 1st. I was at a low point then, and I remember how much I looked forward to hearing from him, reading his emails. They weren’t necessarily grief-related, and they certainly weren’t romantic or even leading to that way. They were just the kind of emails you would send to and receive from a new friend. Full of information about daily goings on and sharing interests and interesting things. They are long letters. I have plans to print them out someday and bind them for posterity – whoever that might end up being.
A year ago tonight, Rob was in Vancouver with the girls and Katy and I were just getting back home from Christmas Eve dinner with friends who are like family. Tonight, I cooked a Chinese feast and we were all together. I don’t think I could have imagined this back then. Even though I knew I would someday meet someone and know love and marriage again, and even though I thought I would be lucky to find someone just like my new friend, Rob, I don’t think I was quite ready to imagine it was Rob. Or he me. But we were closer than we knew.
Merry Christmas to all my friends out there.
Posted in love and relationships, remarriage of widowed people, second marriages, young widowhood | Tagged: couples who met through the YWBB, long distance relationships, Rob and Me | 1 Comment »
Posted by anniegirl1138 on June 11, 2007
Back in my early days on the YWBB, I corresponded and posted back and forth a bit with a man from New Hampshire. His wife had died after a a long bout with cancer about 5 months after Will died. He was one of the first posters I ran across who subscribed to the theory that it was possible to have loved your spouse, grieve for your spouse and still want to forge ahead and build a new life…..maybe even with someone else.
Bob caused quite the stir on the board at the end of the year when he revealed that he had met and was dating a widow he met at a bago in Boston. Though dating through the board and hooking up at bago’s is officially verboten at the YWBB, the truth is that it happens a lot more than most people would care to admit. People meet like Rob and I did through PM’s and email and progress from there. They meet at bago’s. They meet in chat. It happens. It’s just a man/woman thing that nothing gets in the way of when it is meant to be.
Bob and his lady friend, Shel, disappeared from the board not long after the first of the year. I suspected that they were too busy living and being together and building a new life to have time for the board. Today Bob reappeared to announce that he and Shel were married on the first of this month. Although I could be wrong, it is an announcement that will be met with a tepid response at best. Most of the people on the board are too mired to offer congratulations to someone else’s happiness.
I wish Bob and Shel the best.
Posted in YWBB, remarriage of widowed people | Tagged: couples who met through the YWBB | Leave a Comment »
